• Union Health Ministry launches India’s first suicide prevention policy

● The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Monday announced a National Suicide Prevention Strategy, the first of its kind in the country, with timebound action plans and multisectoral collaborations to achieve reduction in suicide mortality by 10% by 2030.

● The strategy broadly seeks to establish effective surveillance mechanisms for suicide within the next three years, establish psychiatric outpatient departments that will provide suicide prevention services through the District Mental Health Programme in all districts within the next five years, and to integrate a mental wellbeing curriculum in all educational institutions within the next eight years.

● It envisages developing guidelines for responsible media reporting of suicides, and restricting access to means of suicide.

● The stress is on developing community resilience and societal support for suicide prevention.

● While the strategy is in line with the WHO’s South East Asia Region Strategy for suicide prevention, it says it will remain true to India’s cultural and social milieu.